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Mumbai And the Locals

The city of Mumbai is a vast sea or perhaps even an ocean. Owing property in Mumbai is a dream for many yet upon the completion of the said goal homebuyers may realize that they have to commute for hours a day to reach their place of employment. Of course if they lived in Mumbai and picked out the new home themselves they knew what lay in store for them once they actually shifted in and had to commute to work every day. Yet knowing the path and walking the path are two distinct frames of mind. I may know I have to commute for 2 hours every day to reach my office on time, yet to actually do so everyday gives one a great deal of time to dwell on whether the decision to buy a home where it was bought was the best possible decision or not.

Many new projects in Mumbai are under construction at greater and greater distances from the city center, yet the heart of the city remains the same unmoving and unappreciative of the plight of newcomers to the city.

The local trains of Mumbai are well known throughout the world, foreigners who have travelled in them speak about them when among friends back at home. They mention how difficult it is to get inside the train and how once inside the passenger wishes he had never gotten in. How tightly packed the passengers are inside the compartment of the train and how they cannot believe people could travel via such a mode only a daily basis.

Don’t miss quote me, westerners love Mumbai because despite the cramped living space in the city, it is a truly monolithic city which best exemplifies the presence of opaque order amongst the visibility of only chaos. Nobody probably knows how Mumbai works, what its center is and how to best govern it. Yet the fact that it does work is in itself worthy of awe and admiration.

Mumbai is chaotic and expensive, property rates in Mumbai may make someone who owns property in London do a double take, that’s how expensive real estate in Mumbai is. As a proud Indian I take pride in the high property rates of the city, even though it means I can never afford to live comfortably there. The high price for even 2 BHK flats in Mumbai means that wealth is being created in the country which is good for an Indian regardless of wherever he or she may reside. Every time Residential projects in Mumbai are completed and sold it means wealth is being created in the economy, much of this wealth flows into segments of the economy that are completely unrelated to the origin of the creation of this wealth. Among one such important segment is education which undoubtedly benefits many citizens over time as a huge economic multiplier leading eventually to the creation of new jobs and services and higher standards of living for all.

Hence even when traveling huge distances via local train in Mumbai, don’t be disheartened. Mumbai continues to expand and over time as the city’s infrastructure and the city’s functioning are better constructed and better understood respectively, ways and means to enrich the lives of the citizens of Mumbai shall be discovered and implemented.